Moved Closer to UC Davis

This is an update from the last few weeks. I have finally moved, a year later than originally planned, and live closer to my job at UC Davis. This has allowed me to go into the office regularly, which in turn has allowed me to meet my supervisors and colleagues in person after having worked remotely for a year. I was really looking forward to this because I felt that when I and my colleagues were all working remotely, it was much harder to exchange ideas, get feedback on my ideas and progress, and learn about the tricks of the trade. In particular, when everyone was working fully remotely, I would have needed to schedule meetings with colleagues in the absence of serendipitous in-person interactions, and others would feel similarly about each other too. I felt this made it easier (almost like the Nash equilibrium of a prisoner's dilemma game) for each individual to settle for limited scheduled virtual interactions punctuating long stretches of working alone without much feedback instead of making that effort to keep meeting regularly; I certainly felt that the need to schedule each remote meeting and the challenges associated with interacting remotely left me feeling more tired & less motivated than would be the case when working in person. Separately, I've been able to explore the town of Davis a little more: I appreciate the presence of sidewalks on every road, though they could be a little better designed. Plus, the weather right now is quite hot, and as climate change makes summers hotter & longer and fire seasons longer & more intense, I wonder how much longer I'll feel comfortable living here in the long-run, though I can see myself living here comfortably in the short-run.

A Reminder about Remote White-Collar Work and Loss during this Pandemic

As always, please note that I have no expertise in public health, and please follow relevant guidelines from public health officials regarding this pandemic.

This is a short post about the effects of this pandemic on white-collar workers, although the needs of essential blue-collar & service workers during this pandemic should not be ignored either. Over the last several months, I have read many op-eds about how the huge shift to remote work for white-collar jobs may or may not last after this pandemic, and on the whole, those op-eds basically saw this shift as a giant social experiment to see how well people could work in white-collar jobs when physically separated from each other, with very little mention of the broader context of this pandemic (beyond narrow questions of hygiene & safety in offices). It was tempting for me to think about this pandemic in such abstract terms too. However, I recently experienced a death in my family due to this coronavirus, and especially as I was very close to that person, it reminded me of a more basic fact, as follows.

This coronavirus is killing many people, and it is irreparably damaging the health of many others; in turn, it is severely damaging the mental (and in some cases physical) well-being of people whose loved ones are directly affected. Thus, white-collar workers aren't simply working from home in a giant social experiment; many of them are dealing with these tragedies among their relatives & friends. Given this, even though it might be tempting for employers, managers, and supervisors to think that workers are accustomed to the situation, I hope that many of them start (if they haven't done so thus far) or continue to be empathetic to the problems that many of their workers face outside of work, giving those workers time & space as appropriate to deal with those problems; of course, many white-collar workers had to deal with caregiving responsibilities as well as illnesses among family members & friends before this pandemic, but this pandemic has drastically increased the number of such people dealing with such problems at any given time, the magnitude of such problems, and the uncertain course of such problems (as the disease itself has such an uncertain course).

Book Review: "Cosmopolitanism" by Kwame Anthony Appiah

I've recently been able to read Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah. When I first picked it up, I thought it might be an interesting take on the issues of multiculturalism and immigration that Western societies have had to deal with over the last 2 decades (considering that this book was published in 2006). It actually turned out to be a bit different than I expected, being instead a more abstract philosophical work that lays out the arguments for a certain sort of cosmopolitan worldview and manner of engaging with other people, with these arguments being based on somewhat more abstract discussions of the histories of nations, cultures, and peoples. In particular, the author discusses how cultures have diffused throughout space and time and how people are capable of engaging with different issues and other people from across the world in an intelligent and active manner, so the framing of issues like cultural imperialism/theft or charity for the poorest around the world may end up being counterproductive in the long-term; additionally, the aim of conversation and engagement with strangers should be to reach a mutual understanding and (ideally, though this depends somewhat on the topic at hand) respect for different culture-specific values, because persuasion of people to change such culture-specific values is typically [though not always] a fool's errand. I realize this brief summary doesn't really do the book justice, because it is a rather dense book (at least for a layperson like myself) with so many different issues discussed at varying lengths and levels of abstraction.

Overall, there are a lot of arguments that seem disconnected, especially the anecdotes of his family or his childhood in Ghana (though those were nice to read), and there seem to be a lot of philosophical subtleties that may well have gone over my head, but while each chapter is a nice self-contained explanation of an aspect of cosmopolitanism, the overarching message seems rather muddled (especially comparing the last chapter to everything before it). There are other issues that I have with the book that I'll detail after the jump, but more broadly, I was somewhat disappointed by the ease with which I could use the author's own terms and arguments against the book. That said, I do agree with one main theme, and that is of respectfully engaging with strangers by critically examining "thick" beliefs on their own terms and as they arise from other "thick" & "thin" beliefs (to be explained after the jump), in order to find common ground while also understanding and respecting where differences arise; this is similar to what I learned from the last student-led discussion I attended at the Day of Action on campus in March. I suppose people who are interested in this sort of thing would be drawn to this book anyway, but I wouldn't really recommend this otherwise. Follow the jump to see more of my thoughts on this book.

Review: Elementary OS 2 "Luna"

Main Screen + Slingshot Menu

About 9 months ago, I checked out the first beta release of Elementary OS 2 "Luna". Since then, the final release has been put out for everyone to see and try, so I am trying it now. I tested this as a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like. Also note that I will not go over all the same things as I did last time, but I will take note of any changes.

Preview: Elementary OS 2 "Luna" Beta 1

Almost 2 years ago, a bit after its official release, I reviewed Elementary OS 0.1 "Jupiter". There I said that there was a ton of hype surrounding its release, and that I had bought into the hype a little bit. Since then, there has been hype of a few more orders of magnitude surrounding version 2 "Luna", given the higher expectations and greater promises. Even so, there hasn't been an official release yet, so I am reviewing the first official pre-release version possible. I'll probably review the official release when that comes out as well.

Main Screen

Elementary OS was born out of the Elementary project, which started as simply a theming project for GNOME 2 and GTK+ applications. It spawned more sophisticated projects like Nautilus Elementary, and then eventually turned into an OS project. The first version was essentially a lighter, faster, optimized, and prettier-looking but otherwise standard Ubuntu-based GNOME 2 distribution. This second version promises much more. For one, many of the GNOME applications and even the GNOME desktop environment itself have been banished in favor of Elementary-developed applications. For another, many further optimizations and design decisions have been made to make it stand out from the pack.

I tried Elementary OS using a live USB made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like, how it has improved, and whether it is worth the hype. For the record, it didn't work correctly the first time that I tried it, so what follows is the result of the second attempt. Also, be aware that in this review more than in others, the focus will be on the desktop environment and not as much on whether specific applications did or did not work.

"Judge Sonia, I Just Met a Judge named Judge Sonia" - Jon Stewart

Yes, that quote is from Jon Stewart from a recent The Daily Show episode. Jon Stewart is godly.

So one of the big news items of this week is Sonia Sotomayor's successful confirmation hearing and confirmation. I got a few things from both sides of the Senate aisle when hearing about the sessions.
It seems like Sotomayor is an eminently qualified judge on her own merits; she has exercised good judgment in interpreting the law for almost all cases, and she seems to be fairly moderate and not consistently judge according to one ideology.
I thought that the Republicans trying to paint her as a left-wing activist judge was rather unfair. That said, any judge who is not as ridiculously conservative as the current Republican party is automatically labeled like her. Furthermore, she has exercised remarkable restraint in general, especially so compared to the right-wing's own judicial hero, Antonin Scalia.
Also, their attempt to bring her down with her "wise Latina" comment was futile. Though her choice of words was rather poor in that it implied bias towards nonwhites rather than the idea that everyone invariably brings their own experiences to the table. This also tied in with President Obama's praise of her "empathy", which Republicans somehow mistook for "sympathy [to Democrats]". They also tried to play the victim by portraying the white American experience as the neutral background upon which all others should be judged, which all combined to portray them as a party of threatened old WASP males. Thankfully, this backfired and didn't affect public opinion of Sotomayor in the least bit. I'm somewhat disappointed that she had to distance herself from the praise of "empathy" just to placate the angry GOP.
To their credit, they really did scour her on the New Haven Firefighter case, because that seems to be her only controversial decision and one that may show how she might judge in the future. This is where the opposition in the Senate really did their jobs well (as per "advice and consent"), though a lot of it was still visceral opposition to her.
I was also disappointed that while Democrats seemed to stand behind her without much conflict, they couldn't really substantiate why she was eminently qualified for the job (though they did invoke her life's story several times). This is why I can't give such details here because no one ever mentioned them.

Then again, there seems to be a consensus that the "advice and consent" has turned into a circus (or a musical!).